1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of integrated circuits. More specifically, the present invention relates to data byte insertion circuitry.
2. Background Information
Advances in integrated circuit technology have led to the birth and proliferation of a wide variety of integrated circuits, including but not limited to application specific integrated circuits, micro-controllers, digital signal processors, general purpose microprocessors, and network processors. At least some of these integrated circuits are known to have implemented data byte insertion circuitry for inserting data bytes into a stream of data words processed over a number of cycles. Typically, the displaced data bytes in a cycle are stored and tracked, and placed into the appropriate data byte positions of the data word the following cycle. However, experimentation has shown that these typical prior art approaches may not be the most efficient approach, especially with respect to the amount of surface area the circuit consumes, to facilitating data byte insertion of any number of data bytes into any position of a current data word, at any time, in the course of processing a stream of data words over a number of cycles.
As those skilled in the art would appreciate, modern integrated circuits are dense and complex, packing millions of transistors into a very small area. Thus, all reductions in surface area consumption by any circuit are desired.